little vicious in the glass. "We baronets, you know, are all booked, and all the world can read our ages; but you women manage better – you and your two dear sisters, Winifred and Georgiana."
"They are dead," interrupted Lady Alice, with more asperity than pathos.
"Yes, I know, poor old souls – to be sure, peers' daughters die like other people, I'm afraid."
"And when they do, are mentioned, if not with sorrow, at least with decent respect, by persons, that is, who know how to behave themselves."
There was a slight quiver in Lady Alice's lofty tone that pleased Sir Jekyl, as you might have remarked had you looked over his shoulder into the glass.
"Well, you know, I was speaking not of deaths but births, and only going to say if you look in the peerage you'll find all the men, poor devils, pinned to their birthdays, and the women left at large, to exercise their veracity on the point; but you need not care – you have not pretended to youth for the last ten years I think."
"You are excessively impertinent, sir."
"I know it," answered Sir Jekyl, with a jubilant chuckle.
A very little more, the Baronet knew, and Lady Alice Redcliffe would have risen gray and grim, and sailed out of the room. Their partings were often after this sort.
But he did not wish matters to go quite that length at present. So he said, in a sprightly way, as if a sudden thought had struck him —
"By Jove, I believe I am devilish impertinent, without knowing it though – and you have forgiven me so often, I'm sure you will once more, and I am really so much obliged for your kindness to Beatrix. I am, indeed."
So he took her hand, and kissed it.
CHAPTER III
Concerning two Remarkable Persons who appeared in Wardlock Church
Lady Alice carried her thin Roman nose some degrees higher; but she said —
"If I say anything disagreeable, it is not for the pleasure of giving you pain, Jekyl Marlowe; but I understand that you mean to have old General Lennox and his artful wife to stay at your house, and if so, I think it an arrangement that had better be dispensed with. I don't think her an eligible acquaintance for Beatrix, and you know very well she's not– and it is not a respectable or creditable kind of thing."
"Now, what d – d fool, I beg pardon – but who the plague has been filling your mind with those ridiculous stories – my dear little mamma? You know how ready I am to confess; you might at least; I tell you everything; and I do assure you I never admired her. She's good looking, I know; but so are fifty pictures and statues I've seen, that don't please me."
"Then it's true, the General and his wife are going on a visit to Marlowe?" insisted Lady Alice, drily.
"No, they are not. D – me, I'm not thinking of the General and his wife, nor of any such d – d trumpery. I'd give something to know who the devil's taking these cursed liberties with my name."
"Pray, Jekyl Marlowe, command your language. It can't the least signify who tells me; but you see I do sometimes get a letter."
"Yes, and a precious letter too. Such a pack of lies did any human being ever hear fired off in a sentence before? I'm épris of Mrs. General Lennox. Thumper number one! She's a lady of – I beg pardon – easy virtue. Thumper number two! and I invite her and her husband down to Marlowe, to make love of course to her, and to fight the old General. Thumper number three!"
And the Baronet chuckled over the three "thumpers" merrily.
"Don't talk slang, if you please – gentlemen don't, at least in addressing ladies."
"Well, then, I won't; I'll speak just as you like, only you must not blow me up any more; for really there is no cause, and we here only two or three minutes together, you know; and I want to tell you something, or rather to ask you – do you ever hear anything of those Deverells, you know?"
Lady Alice looked quite startled, and turned quickly half round in her chair, with her eyes on Sir Jekyl's face. The Baronet's smile subsided, and he looked with a dark curiosity in hers. A short but dismal silence followed.
"You've heard from them?"
"No!" said the lady, with little change in the expression of her face.
"Well, of them?"
"No," she repeated; "but why do you ask? It's very strange!"
"What's strange? Come, now, you have something to say; tell me what it is."
"I wonder, Jekyl, you ask for them, in the first place."
"Well – well, of course; but what next?" murmured the Baronet, eagerly: "why is it so strange?"
"Only because I've been thinking of them – a great deal – for the last few days; and it seemed very odd your asking; and in fact I fancy the same thing has happened to us both."
"Well, may be; but what is it?" demanded the Baronet, with a sinister smile.
"I have been startled; most painfully and powerfully affected; I have seen the most extraordinary resemblance to my beautiful, murdered Guy."
She rose, and wept passionately, standing with her face buried in her handkerchief.
Sir Jekyl frowned with closed eyes and upturned face, waiting like a patient man bored to death, for the subsidence of the storm which he had conjured up. Very pale, too, was that countenance, and contracted for a few moments with intense annoyance.
"I saw the same fellow," said the Baronet, in a subdued tone, so soon as there was a subsidence, "this evening; he's at that little inn on the Sterndale Road. Guy Strangways he calls himself; I talked with him for a few minutes; a gentlemanly young man; and I don't know what to make of it. So I thought I'd ask you whether you could help me to a guess; and that's all."
The old lady shook her head.
"And I don't think you need employ quite such hard terms," he said.
"I don't want to speak of it at all," said she; "but if I do I can't say less; nor I won't – no, never!"
"You see it's very odd, those two names," said Sir Jekyl, not minding; "and as you say, the likeness so astonishing – I – I – what do you think of it?"
"Of course it's an accident," said the old lady.
"I'm glad you think so," said he, abruptly.
"Why, what could it be? you don't believe in apparitions?" she replied, with an odd sort of dryness.
"I rather think not," said he; "I meant he left no very near relation, and I fancied those Deverell people might have contrived some trick, or intended some personation, or something, and I thought that you, perhaps, had heard something of their movements."
"Nothing – what could they have done, or why should they have sought to make any such impression? I don't understand it. It is very extraordinary. But the likeness in church amazed and shocked me, and made me ill."
"In church, you say?" repeated Sir Jekyl.
"Yes,
